Indian warships to exercise with Brazil, S Africa

New Delhi: India`s warships will be on a
two-month long deployment in African coast when they will hold
a trilateral exercise with navies of Brazil and South Africa,
apart from carrying out anti-piracy patrols in Mauritius and
Seychelles beginning this weekend.

Four warships including a destroyer and two frigates from
the Navy`s Western Fleet would be deployed in the Indian Ocean
Region when they would also visit Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique
and South Africa, where the biennial IBSAMAR
(India-Brazil-South Africa Maritime) exercise will be held.

A senior Navy officer said here today that the deployment
would provide the Indian Navy "good opportunity to
re-establish and further relations" with the navies of the
African continent in areas of training and passage exercises.

Indian naval destroyer INS Mysore, frigates INS Tabar and
INS Ganga along with tanker INS Aditya would be sailing there
when they would also patrol the Exclusive Economic Zones of
Mauritius and Seychelles and carry out anti-piracy operations.

Brazil will participate in the IBSAMAR exercise with its
warships, while South Africa would bring their submarines.

During the IBSAMAR exercise, to be held in September, the
three navies would also perform anti-air, anti-submarine,
visit-board-search-seize operations apart from other naval
warfare manoeuvres such as fuelling in mid sea.

"This will be the second edition of IBSAMAR. The first
edition was held in 2008. This year`s exercise will be much
more complex than the previous one," the officer added.

This time though there would be no aerial fleet of the
Indian Navy participating in the IBSAMAR exercise, though
South Africa would be bringing in their aircraft, he added.

IBSAMAR would be held around the South African coast and
there would be visits to Durban, Cape Town, Simon`s Town and
Port Elizabeth as part of the exercise.

India will be the lead Navy for this edition of IBSAMAR
and Brazil will take upon the role in the next edition to be
held in 2012.

"The exercise is to develop interoperability among the
three navies so that they could carry out joint operations
during times of need in the high seas," the officer said.

The western board deployment of the Navy comes a month
after its warships from the eastern fleet had gone on a
two-month voyage to south east Asian countries and Australia,
when they called on ports in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia,
Vietnam, Singapore, and Brunei.